


Dappled Sunlight

by WallofIllusion



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: F/M, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 16:36:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4229067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/WallofIllusion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First relationships are hard. Even harder if one half of the couple has to convince the other half not to hate himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dappled Sunlight

_Thunk_.

Stein took a moment to appreciate the fact that there was no sound in the world as satisfying as that of a human body shoved against a wall.

Only a moment, though. He wasn’t doing this for fun, after all.

He tightened his grip on his classmate’s collar and leered. The classmate was either dazed or playing possum—probably the latter, judging by his pointed avoidance of Stein’s eyes.

“Did you think,” Stein said softly, “that I wouldn’t hear what’s being said about us?”

His victim/prey/whatever winced and made a token attempt to push Stein away.

“I’ll break your arms.”

He stopped.

Stein was aware of his audience. They had ducked into nearby classrooms rather than watching openly from the halls, but he could still feel their souls and their stares. He knew that they hated him, feared him; they thought he was sick beyond healing. And now they were saying that Marie—

“Care to repeat the rumor? Just to make sure I have the details straight?” Stein snarled to his captive, who shook his head desperately. “No? Then why don’t I tell you what I’ve heard. You—and your friend hiding out in Half Moon over there—” This he said in a louder voice, to give the friend a scare—”have been loudly wondering what _exactly_ Marie sees in me. Am I understanding correctly so far?”

“I-it was a joke, we were just…”

“And your hypothesis—”

Stein suddenly felt like he was going to vomit. He was shaking, and hot-headed and dizzy with rage at this stupid _bastard_. The light around him seemed too bright. He could feel _everything_ , from his feet solid against the floor to his victim’s heartbeat through his grip on his shirt. Stein’s heart was pounding, too. He had not felt this… _vibrant_ in a while, and he wasn’t sure he’d missed it, but while the feeling was upon him, he grimaced and put his hand across his classmate’s face, readying a Soul Menace. Immediately a palpable fear filled the air, and Stein heard sounds of panic from his audience. If he was not quick, a teacher would come, but—

Suddenly the light’s intensity began to fade, and Stein looked over his shoulder to see Marie hurrying forward, her eyes concerned.

“Franken? What are you doing?”

Stein lowered one hand but kept a grip on his classmate’s collar. “He’s been spreading rumors about you.”

Marie frowned slightly. “What kind of rumors?”

“He’s been saying…”

Stein felt deflated, powerless. Shamed. Suddenly unable to meet his girlfriend’s eyes, he dropped his gaze to his shoes.

“He’s been saying that you like me because you’re as sick as I am, and that I h-hurt you and you like it—”

As he repeated the rumors, Stein tightened his hold on the boy’s collar again. But then Marie’s hand appeared and loosened his grip and took his hand for her own. She gave it a warm, reassuring squeeze. And then, turning to the escaping rumor-monger, she said, “ _Wait_.”

The boy froze. When Marie Mjolnir started talking like that, you _listened_.

“Franken is _not_ ‘sick.’ He is a billion times smarter than you, and he feels things a billion times more than you do, too. _That_ is what I love about him. And so you’d better _pray_ that I never hear that you made him feel bad about himself ever again. Got it?”

The boy seemed almost too afraid to nod, but he managed one somehow. So with that, Marie turned in the direction from which she’d come and began pulling Stein away. Still uncertain of himself, he didn’t think to protest at first, but then the school bell rang.

“Class…” he said, but Marie kept pulling.

“We’re ditching. Let’s get some coffee or something.”

Well, he had no objection to skipping class. He didn’t want to sit under the stares of his peers and the suspicious glances of the teacher. For once, he didn’t feel like leering back until he felt them cower. But for Marie to skip class—that was unheard of. Maybe he was a bad influence on her.

He shuddered.

He was a _horrible_ influence on her.

But her warmth flowed through their hands and up his arm. If he wasn’t careful, it would reach his heart and he might start thinking he deserved it.

*

“Are you OK?”

That was a stupid question. The wrong question. Stein hadn’t been in the mood for coffee, so instead they’d wandered to the park just off campus and found a nice tree to sit under. Marie was leaning back on her hands. Stein had his knees pulled up to his chest, one arm wrapped tightly around them. With the other hand, he picked at the grass at his feet. He didn’t seem to be shaking anymore, but Marie still thought he looked a little pale. His mouth kept twitching into a frown. He was probably still thinking about the rumors he’d mentioned.

Marie had known there were rumors. Her classmates—not her friends, of course, but the boys in the back of class who were good for nothing but dropping books on the floor in the middle of lecture—had started to whisper behind their hands when she was near. They were always loud enough to get her attention, but never clear enough for her to make out. She’d seen mockery in their eyes. She’d held her head as high as ever.

Had she suspected that it had something to do with Stein? …It would have been silly not to. People hadn’t treated her this way before. Marie was used to being liked. Sure, she had a bit of a temper, but people always seemed quick to forgive her outbursts by the next time she smiled. And her popularity hadn’t changed, but there was something different about it now: wary glances sent her way when people thought she wasn’t looking, mostly. And rumors. The ways people were talking about her were not all kind anymore.

“What are we supposed to be going over in class, anyway?” she wondered aloud.

Stein shifted to his back, staring up into the dappled shade falling over them. He kept his knees bent as if to serve as a barrier between the two of them. “Basic soulology stuff,” he muttered. “What you can tell from observing someone’s soul. It’s all really easy.”

“Then we picked a good day to ditch!” Marie said. As if it had been entirely their own choice, as if they’d chosen at all. She lay down next to Stein, her head parallel to his. Maybe in a few minutes she’d have the guts to reach for his hand. “Hey, if it’s confusing to me, will you explain it to me later?”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re a weapon, Marie, so you don’t need to know.”

“I’m still curious!”

A smile flitted across his face then, warm and genuine, but it soured in an instant and then disappeared. Marie’s heart sank. Had she said something wrong? Stein was hard to navigate because he was used to people being mean to him. When Marie misspoke, or when she hit a nerve, he never complained. He only closed off in the coldest, most factual way. Like it was to be expected. Even from her.

Marie sighed and looked up at the glimpses of blue she could see through the leaves. Above, the sun was laughing down on them, confident and full of life. _It_ was easier to read than Stein was sometimes.

“Marie…”

With a start, Marie realized that Stein had turned his head towards her.

“I’ll tell you about it if you need me to.”

She smiled. “Thanks, Franken. You’re such a good tutor. You know that, right? The textbook uses such vague language sometimes but you always make it easy to understand.”

“It _is_ easy to understand,” Stein mumbled. “And you have to like people to be a good tutor.”

“You do like people!”

“I hate people.” He crossed his arms across his chest and pulled his legs in a little tighter.

“If you hated them, you wouldn’t care so much what they think.”

“I _don’t_ care what they think.”

Marie scooted a little closer to him so that their sides were almost touching. To his raised eyebrow, she said, “You’re not a very good liar.”

Of course he cared what they thought. Marie knew this deeply and she didn’t understand why no one else seemed to get it. It hurt him to know that they thought he was dangerous, so when that belief showed no signs of dissipating he did everything he could to live up to it. To pretend that he wanted to scare them. Marie was absolutely certain that it was pretense, but Stein was all facts and evidence and hard, rational edges, and if she couldn’t provide those things, she’d never be able to prove it to him.

“You care what they think of me,” she pointed out, because that much had concrete proof in the feeling of the grass prickling their necks and the distant chiming of the school bell.

He scoffed. “You don’t deserve their hatred.”

“Neither do you.”

“Did you not _watch_ what was happening?” Stein sat up and looked down at her, his face pinched. “Didn’t you see what I was about to do to him? Do you think I would have regretted turning his brain into scrambled eggs?”

“Yes,” Marie answered without sitting up. She simply gazed into Stein’s face from below. She knew her boyfriend. She knew what he looked like when he was in pain. Even if she couldn’t use Soul Perception, she had heard his soul screaming for the entire situation to stop, all of it, from the rumors they were spreading to the confrontation and the stares and fear of their classmates.

Stein only looked down at her, waiting for her to take her certainty back. She wished, suddenly, that he would kiss her. The thought seemed misplaced, and maybe it was just because she was a young girl and her crush was leaning over her, staring down at her. And because a first kiss under a tree in a sunny park (while ditching class, even) was so adorably picaresque.

But that wasn’t it, at its heart. There was something more than that. It was something about how unsuited it would be to this conversation. Stein was so prickly, and Marie just wanted him to lower his defenses for once. She wouldn’t ask him to do so with anyone else. But she, at least, was no threat to him. A kiss might mean that he understood that.

“Well, you’re wrong,” Stein said, bringing her back to reality with a bump. There was a sneer on his face. “Who do you think you’re dating, anyway? Someone who has a heart? Someone who knows what regret feels like? I would have blown his brains out for badmouthing you—”

“I don’t want you to do that,” Marie said.

Stein tried to say something, then closed his mouth in a bitter grimace.

“You didn’t want to do it, either.”

“Are you kidding me?” Stein burst out. “I _wanted_ to hurt him, Marie. It felt good to push him up against the wall and hold his shirt as he tried to escape. I’m sadistic and cruel. That much of that damn rumor is true.”

Marie closed her eyes because she couldn’t look at his face any longer. It was making her chest hurt. Why didn’t he, why didn’t _anyone_ ever realize how lost he looked? Or did they see and not care? Even the teachers talked about him. Marie had caught them in the hall, whispering and then growing strangely silent when she walked by. When it got out that they were together (thanks, no doubt, to the loose tongue of one Spirit Albarn), Miss Minnie had taken Marie aside and tried to talk her out of it. Stein wasn’t healthy, she said. There was something wrong with him.

And it wasn’t like Marie didn’t know that. She didn’t know exactly what was troubling Stein—had no way of knowing it, because he hid it all in sarcasm and defensive walls—but what she did know was that he was lonely. And there was really only one cure for being lonely.

She heard a rustle, and with a start she realized that Stein was standing, trying to leave her behind. She scrambled to her feet and caught his arm. His shoulders slumped.

“I’m going to hurt you someday,” he said, his voice rough. “That’s the point of the rumors. I’m going to hurt you and I’m going to enjoy it.”

“Do you enjoy thinking about that?”

“No!” He practically shouted it, giving her a furious look. “What do you think the point of shutting that idiot up was? It makes me _sick_ every time I look at him because of what he’s been saying about you—”

“It wasn’t just for fun, then?”

“Of course not!”

Marie watched him until he let his own words sink in.

“Revenge isn’t such an awful motive,” she said quietly.

He swallowed. “You don’t understand. You don’t know how—how _good_ it feels to grab someone’s body like that, to know what your own hands can do to them…”

“Well, I am a weapon,” she pointed out. “Trust me, I know what it’s like to be proud of the damage you can do to someone.”

“ _You_ do?” he gaped.

“It’s exciting, right? It makes you feel powerful.”

Stein’s brow furrowed. “I… guess.”

“That’s not weird.”

It probably wasn’t the best, either; her father, a pacifist, always seemed unsettled by Marie’s abilities and her sense of triumph when she was wielded successfully. She wasn’t sending him very detailed letters back from school anymore because they always resulted in concern, which sometimes culminated in a threat to pull her out of the Academy. _Violence is never the answer,_ he was fond of saying. Maybe he was right. But sometimes it was the most efficient.

Stein’s arm was still in her hand. Tentatively, she loosened her grip; when he didn’t bolt, she lowered her arm to her side.

“Do you think you’re evil?” she asked him.

He shuddered, his shoulders hunching. “I’m dangerous, violent, unhinged—”

Marie’s face fell. “Says who?”

“My parents. My doctors. The school shrink has been finding ways to dance around those particular words for about a year, but if she hears about today’s incident, I think I can finally get her to spit them out.”

“Not if she doesn’t want me to slug her.” Marie crossed her arms, scowling. Maybe if she could be angry enough she could keep from crying.

“You can’t slug the school shrink.”

“And she can’t tell you that you’re evil. That’s mean. I’m tired of people who think they can be mean to you!”

“Well, they’re hardly doing so unprovoked,” Stein said, crossing his own arms.

Marie growled in frustration. “I’m _this close_ to slugging _you_.”

“Because I’m being provoking,” Stein agreed with a smirk.

“ _Because_ ,” Marie countered, her voice rising in pitch, “you aren’t listening to me, you aren’t paying any attention to what I’m saying! I shouldn’t have to work so hard to convince you to like yourself!”

Stein laughed coldly. “What the hell is there to like?”

“You’re passionate, you’re a genius, you’re extremely sensitive—”

“I fail to see how that last one’s something desirable in a romantic partner,” Stein said. “Even if it _did_ apply to me, which it doesn’t.”

Marie threw her hands in the air. “Why are you being so _stupid_?”

“Didn’t you say I was a genius just a second ago?”

“You’re a genius but you’re an idiot about things like this because you won’t listen to anyone else and I’m tired of you not listening to me!”

“I listen,” Stein snarled back. “I hear everything you try to tell me, but considering that you’re the _only person I’ve ever met_ who doesn’t think I’m a dangerous lunatic, I think it’s safer to assume, scientifically, that either you’re full of shit or you’re fooling yourself. I don’t care which one it is. Either way, I’m not here to listen to your lies. _You_ should get to class. _I_ am going to go home and study something worthwhile.”

That was it. Marie balled her hand into a fist and swung at Stein. But she was too slow; he dodged the blow and caught her wrist so that she wouldn’t fall over. His grip was tight and shaking. For a moment, they both stood there, panting. And then Marie realized there was no stopping it, so she pulled her arm free so that she could bury her face in her hands before she began to sob. She tried to get a hold of herself—if she didn’t look up soon, then Stein would be gone and this would end the same way it always did, with a complete lack of resolution. They’d go their separate ways, and once they weren’t angry anymore they’d come together again and say nothing of what had happened.

And Marie was so _tired_ of it.

Wiping her eyes on the back of her hand, she gave a long sniffle and raised her head. But to her surprise, Stein hadn’t moved. He was watching her, his mouth twitching as if he couldn’t decide what to feel.

“Look,” he said, “would you stop crying? You don’t need to cry over me.”

But that only made the tears that she’d almost stifled return with a vengeance. Before she buried her face in her hands again, she saw Stein’s shoulders droop with defeat.

“I’m sorry, okay? I don’t think you’re a liar and I don’t think you’re stupid. I don’t. I just don’t know how else you could be so wrong.”

“M—” She made an effort to speak through hiccupping sobs. Recognizing it for what it was, Stein waited. Finally, she took a deep breath and swallowed, peeking at Stein through her fingers. “M-maybe I’m not wrong,” she ventured.

Stein cringed and Marie covered her eyes again. _That_ , of all things, shouldn’t have been what made him cringe. But she wasn’t surprised, either, and she prepared herself for a renewed argument—

But what she heard instead was a long sigh, followed by the words, “If I agree, will you stop crying?”

That almost shocked the tears out of her. She lowered her hands and stared at Stein. He turned his head away, but he kept looking at her out of the corner of his eye.

“You said ‘maybe.’ It’s a big maybe. A _huge_ maybe. It’s not—it’s not my main theory, okay? But I wouldn’t be a very good scientist if I didn’t acknowledge other hypotheses.”

Marie chuckled, pressing her hands to her mouth. Honestly, it still felt a little like crying, but she was sure that she was smiling. “I guess that’s true.”

“Yeah.” Biting his lip, he looked back at her. She wiped her eyes one more time and tried to show him that she was smiling, now. He made a strained, fleeting expression back, but that might have been a smile, too.

When she lowered her hands, he reached forward impulsively and took them. He was standing so close to her; they could have hugged, they could have even kissed. Marie found that she was holding her breath in anticipation, her cheeks turning pink. But he only held her hands tighter, and his eyes searched her face. She hoped he was finding what he needed.

Finally, he sighed and shook his head. “I don’t get you, Marie. There’s something… something I’m missing. I just can’t figure it out.”

“I think you get me just fine,” Marie protested, but the uncertainty on Stein’s face didn’t waver. So she squeezed his hands. He started as if suddenly coming back to himself. “If you really want to know…” Marie said, a hint of mischievousness in her voice, “then we should talk it out over ice cream.”

And finally, finally, he smiled and agreed with her.


End file.
